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It’s time for women to shed their menstrual hypocrisy. Period: Teitel

A massive survey conducted by women’s health app, Clue, revealed that embarrassment and shame around menstruation is alive and well across the globe.

You don’t have to be oppressed or exceedingly conservative to refer to your cycle in code, or to conceal your tampon on your way to the bathroom, writes Emma Teitel. You simply have to be a woman, period. (UnTabooed)

Picture this: you’re a successful career woman and a proud feminist. In fact, you’re in your office right now reading a news article about the wage gap when you suddenly decide enough is enough — it’s time to ask your boss for a raise. But when you get up from your desk something else becomes abundantly clear: it’s time to change your tampon.

You reach for the tampon in your filing cabinet, tuck it discretely into your purse, and take a brisk walk to the nearest bathroom.

There is no logical reason for you to carry your purse to the toilet but you do so anyway, because despite your otherwise strong feminist ideals, you can’t bear the thought of walking through the office, tampon in hand, in plain sight of your male colleagues and boss.

You are deeply ashamed by your hypocrisy. But at least you are not alone.

This week a massive survey conducted by women’s health app, Clue, in unison with the International Women’s Health Coalition, revealed that embarrassment and shame around menstruation is alive and well across the globe, not merely in theocratic societies where women are scorned for being forthright about anything, but in secular, socially liberal nations that have more or less embraced modern feminism.

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For example, the survey of 90,000 women in 190 countries, determined that only 34 per cent of Canadian women, 32 per cent of American women, and 35 per cent of women in the U.K. are comfortable talking to male classmates or colleagues about periods.

Seventeen per cent worldwide said they have missed school or work in fear someone might discover they are on their period, and the survey turned up 5,000 highly entertaining euphemisms women use to describe their menstrual cycles: “Aunt Flo” and “Surfing the Crimson Wave” are popular in the U.K. The Germans, on the other hand, prefer “Erdbeerwoche,” meaning “Strawberry Week.”

Moral of the story: you don’t have to be oppressed or exceedingly conservative to refer to your cycle in code, or to conceal your tampon on your way to the bathroom. You simply have to be a woman, period.

Embarrassment around That Time of Month is universal. The question is what do we do about it?

Some feminists, such as Bex Baxter, director of Coexist, a community arts hub in the U.K., have proposed workplace policies that allow women to take days off when they are on their period and monitor their cycles at work.

It is, after all, ironic that period cramps can be as painful as heart attacks (according to a recent study) yet women seldom cite menstrual cramps as a reason for taking a sick day, instead citing the common cold or flu.

Diandra Kalish, founder of UnTabooed, a New York-based organization “committed to breaking the taboo surrounding menstruation” attributes period shame among otherwise feminist women, to “the ick factor.” Because most women use “disposables” (tampons and sanitary napkins), they regard menstruation as gross.

“If you throw something away, you think it is inherently disgusting,” says Kalish, who promotes reusable products such as menstrual cups and cloth pads, which allow the wearer to monitor her “flow” and in turn learn about and potentially even appreciate her menstrual cycle. “The biggest challenge is teaching (women) that your period isn’t gross,” says Kalish.

But periods are objectively gross — the same way nosebleeds are gross. It is gross to bleed from your orifices, be they on your face or between your legs. Trying to convince the average woman that there is something majestic about blood, cramps and diarrhea — that we should regard as a cosmic gift what is really a painful, nasty nuisance — seems like an uphill battle.

Perhaps then, the solution to diminishing the period taboo exists somewhere in the middle. We don’t have to chart our cycles on our cubicle walls, or offer supplications to Gaia. Nor must we curl up into balls of embarrassment and purchase tiny tampons made to look like candies or packets of sugar. We are adults.

There is a happy medium between abject shame and fervent celebration. And if we want to find it, it’s about time we got over ourselves and stopped being so coy about a kind-of-gross but perfectly natural predicament. In Kalish’s words we should “own” our periods.

So: if you’re a woman who works in an office, next time Aunt Flo comes to town, own it. Leave your purse at your desk and walk to the bathroom, super, jumbo tampon in hand. And if you’re a man: be cool.

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